Welcome to the NZ Skeptics newsletter.

You’ll no doubt be aware that the travel bubble with Australia was announced last week, and from next week people travelling between the two countries will have the benefit of not having to go into a quarantine facility for two weeks before being allowed to wander free in New Zealand. 

This has affected me personally. My wife is currently in Australia visiting family and was due to return next weekend to then enter MIQ. Fortunately she’s been able to change her flights to return a day later when the bubble opens instead. Reflecting on her time in Australia she reports that there’s an app that Australians can use to track their movements (similar to our COVID tracer) but it’s not widely used nor are businesses commonly displaying the codes to scan. We can only hope that the travel bubble works out and that we’re not plunged back into isolation again by less-than-strict policies on the other side of the Tasman. 

The pandemic rages on throughout the rest of the world, and while vaccine rollouts are helping, we’re collectively not out of the woods yet, and less privileged countries are having an even harder time of it.

With those cheery thoughts out of the way, I wish you a great week!
Craig Shearer

NZ Skeptics Membership

Many thanks to the people who have paid their 2021 membership subs. This is a final reminder to members who paid subs in 2020, but have yet to pay 2021 subs, that the 2021 subs are now due. Memberful have streamlined the payment process (it is no longer necessary to set a password), and this is reflected in the instructions that follow:

1. Go to nzskeptics.memberful.com

2. Enter your email address into the Email field

3. Click the “Send sign in link” button.

4. Wait for an email to arrive.

5. When the email arrives, click the “Sign in” button.

6. Once logged in, click subscriptions to view your subscriptions.

7. Your current subscription type should reflect the most recent sub payment made. If you need to change to a different plan, click the Change button.

8. If your subscription is expired, click Renew and enter credit card details.

9. If you need to change your email address, name or postal address, that can be done in the Profile page.

If you have any problems, or would prefer to pay via internet banking, then please contact the NZ Skeptics treasurer (Paul Ashton) at [email protected]

Beware of Scientologists Bearing Gifts

I recently heard about someone who signed up on the MeetUp website for a conversational English course in Auckland, and when they arrived they found out that the course was being run by Scientologists. This type of bait and switch sneakiness is about what we’d expect from Scientology, so I decided to search google and find the course in question.

I used Scientology’s Auckland address in quotes as my search term – “136 Grafton Road” – and added “site:meetup.com” to restrict my results to just the MeetUp website.

https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ameetup.com+%22136+grafton+road%22

I was not prepared for the sheer number of meetings I was shown:

• Success through Communication
• Grammar and Communication
• How to get RID of STRESS!
• What are the key factors for being successful?
• How to Keep Yourself and Others Well Workshop

One MeetUp group appears to have been re-used for meetings on totally unrelated topics, possibly through laziness, and had the following meetings:

• Communication for Business
• English Study Group
• Rubik’s Cube Master Class
• Predict – Human – Behavior – Seminar
• FREE movie night Auckland
• Open House for Coffee 🙂

If this was another group I wouldn’t be so suspicious, but as we skeptics know Scientology has a long and sordid history of trying to lure people in under false pretences, and then selling them overpriced books and courses under extreme pressure. There’s a big drive in Scientology to get people through the door, called “body routing”, and I’ve been to the showing of an internal Scientology video where exaggerated numbers were used, boasting of increases in course completion, conversions, body routing and many other metrics Scientology like to measure, inflate and promote. I’m betting that Auckland’s Scientologists have had pressure applied to improve their stats ever since they spent millions of dollars opening their new “Ideal Org” building. These meetings are likely a way to boost the numbers of people coming through the door, so that head office can be told of how much better they’re doing now they are doing things the “Hubbard” way.

So, if you hear of anyone you know in Auckland who is looking for a new social group to join, please make sure they steer clear of groups who operate from 136 Grafton Road.

Mark Honeychurch
Secretary, NZ Skeptics
 

An Open Letter to Plan B

A new group called FACT (Fight Against Conspiracy Theories) has published an open letter to Plan B about their connection with Voices for Freedom. The letter calls on Plan B to distance themselves from Voices for Freedom and the group’s anti-science stance on COVID related issues.

The letter is signed by scientists such as Siouxsie Wiles, Des Gorman and Alison Campbell, as well as a few organisations including the NZ Skeptics.

Plan B have always framed themselves as a group of evidence based academics who disagree with the idea that lockdowns are an acceptable solution to the COVID pandemic. However their flirting with Voices for Freedom includes promotion of Voices for Freedom content, and Plan B’s Dr Thornley giving the keynote talk at a Voices for Freedom event. This really sows doubt on the idea that Plan B is an evidence-driven academic group. Rather, it suggests that their beliefs are more of an ideology than a rational conclusion, and that anyone who agrees with them is a worthy ally, no matter how dangerous their ideas may be.

For example, Voices for Freedom’s recent misinformation spreading, on their website, includes suggesting that COVID vaccines are unsafe, vitamins can help lessen COVID symptoms, wearing a mask is ineffective, Invermectin is a “miracle drug” for treating COVID, and PCR testing is ineffective. Of course none of this is evidence based, and much of it is likely to be dangerous.

They also accuse scientists of “flip flopping” when they change their minds. This one really gets me. As science is a continual process of gathering evidence and making tentative conclusions, scientists changing their minds as new evidence comes to light is expected, and perfectly reasonable. Trying to frame people who are willing to change their opinion based on new evidence as flip floppers is pretty galling, and shows either a lack of understanding of science or a deliberate attempt to malign it.

Welcome to the NZ Skeptics newsletter.

This week I’ve got a variety of topics I hope you’ll enjoy!

Wishing you a great week…

Craig Shearer

Recently, Avi Loeb, who’s chair of the Department of Astronomy at Harvard University published a book: Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth which details his hypothesis about Oumuamua and that it’s actually an alien ship visiting our solar system!

Kim Hill, on Radio New Zealand, interviewed him. The interview is fairly wide-ranging, and Kim does a reasonable job of asking some skeptical questions. 

Towards the end of the interview it truly goes off the rails with Loeb proposing a solution to the Fermi Paradox that we’re just not that interesting, and that most of the stars in our galaxy are infrared emitters and so our planet is not that interesting for interstellar tourism because of our green grass. (Paint me skeptical, but much of the appeal of travel is seeing interesting and unique stuff that’s out of the ordinary!)

Alarmingly, Loeb thinks that science should be driven by public interest – and that scientists (because they’re funded by the public) shouldn’t be working on stuff that the public’s not interested in! Obviously there have been a ton of discoveries in science that have produced real-world benefits but wouldn’t have been obvious from the outset that were produced by fundamental and esoteric research. 

Today I listened to the Skeptics Guide to the Universe which also covered the item, but this time with an explanation for the anomalous behaviour of Oumuamua. It turns out that the anomalous behaviour is actually well explained by it being composed of Nitrogen ice, rather than water ice. 

Steven Novella does a good job of detailing this on his blog and why this is just another example of the “aliens of the gap” fallacy.

Grieving penguins

Onto my second item from my weekend away – this time to do with the spreading of fake news. During the weekend I happened to visit the local markets in Russell, and there was a stallholder selling some quite nice art, some of which features birds – penguins in particular. I happened to overhear a conversation where a woman was relating to the stallholder the story of the penguins in Melbourne that were watching the pretty lights of the Melbourne skyline together – and that they were comforting each other due to loss of their loved ones. The source of this was an award-winning photograph by Tobias Baumgaetner of the pair staring off into the distance. 

I resisted the urge to comment that the story wasn’t really true (which would have been a “dick move”). While the photo is excellent the story behind it has been investigated and found to be less than perfectly accurate. This does go to show the power of a good story though, in sticking in peoples’ minds.

Christchurch talk

If you’re in or around Christchurch, you may be interested in attending the Christchurch Skeptics in the Pub. One of our NZ Skeptics committee members, Jonathan Harper, is giving a talk about skepticism. It’s at the Pegasus Arms, 6pm on Thursday 8th April. You can register your RSVP on the group’s meetup page. 

Welcome to the NZ Skeptics newsletter.

It seems there’s quite a lot of skeptically-related topics in the news at the moment. Perhaps there’s a backlash to a lot of stuff that came out in 2020 that was pure pseudoscience. 

Speaking of media – it’s great to hear the voices of prominent science promoters back on Magic Talk with Graeme Hill. Graeme’s now doing his show every week night from 7 – 10pm, and has had Alison Campbell, Siouxsie Wiles and Mark Honeychurch on. Long may this continue.

Wishing you a great week…
Craig Shearer

BOTA FTW

Today I finally made it to the Builders Of The Adytum, a strange group whose beliefs combine Kabbalah and Tarot into an unusual, but enjoyable, philosophy.

The meeting was fun, with incense, chanting, music, a sermon and mention of the Philosopher’s Stone, transmutation, magical healing and mystical powers. I visited with Tim, my long-time partner in all things weird and wonderful, and we have been invited back to the group to join in with study sessions – something we are very much looking forward to. Although as a skeptic I find it hard to believe people when they tell me that they have figured out the secrets of the universe, nonetheless I enjoy hearing others’ ideas and seeing what kinds of people are attracted to these groups. Unsurprisingly, for most of these organisations, their membership is quite diverse – just like it is for a group like ours, the Skeptics.

One potential worry for us is that while at the event we bumped into someone who we had already met at the Ancient Mystical Order of the Rosicrucians (AMORC) last year. The AMORC group had “done their research” and found out from a google search that I’m a skeptic. Even so we had a good talk with the few AMORC members that we met on the day, explaining that we weren’t there to demean them, but rather were genuinely curious about their beliefs.

Tim and I have jokingly labeled the member of both AMORC and BOTA as our Marla Singer (watch Fight Club if you’re not sure what this means), and we’re hoping that he doesn’t scare the members of the BOTA group away from us. We’re genuinely interested in the group, even if we’re unlikely to ever get to the point where we pay membership fees, so I hope we are able to continue visiting until we have a good appreciation for what their beliefs are and what drives them. I’ve had an experience of being outed once before, by Nigel Antony Gray when I was attending Scientology meetings, and it was a bit disappointing to have to leave that particular escapade not when I wanted to, but when someone else had pulled the plug on it.

For those who really don’t understand why I do this kind of thing, I get that it can seem a little weird. Although some skeptics enjoy seeing what’s happening on the other side of the fence, I know many skeptics who either don’t have the time for nonsense, or find that seeing it up close makes them angry. After all, many of these groups are selling a false bill of goods – they promise to impart the secrets of the universe to you, and then they take your hard earned money and don’t deliver the goods. That’s something that we should all be angry about, although it’s often hard to find a way to turn that anger into meaningful positive action.

Mark Honeychurch

More Tamakis, Vaccines and Earthquakes

Following on from last week’s stories about the Tamakis saying they won’t be getting vaccinated, and Ken Ring saying he predicted our recent earthquake, there have been a couple of interesting developments.

Firstly, out of over 12,000 frontline workers who have been offered the COVID19 vaccine, just 21 of them have refused the vaccine so far. I’ve heard horror stories of nurses in New Zealand who are against vaccination, so it’s great to hear that so few of those who are doing such an amazing job at the front line have refused. The article goes on to talk about how those who refuse may be redeployed into other roles if they can’t be convinced. This sounds to me like a very pragmatic way to deal with this issue. Much as it feels to me that people with anti-science views have no right to be working in healthcare, the most important reason for vaccinating frontline staff is to shore up our MIQ (Managed Isolation and Quarantine) barrier. Holes in this protective layer would not be good, so it makes sense to remove anyone who may prove to be a potential gap in our defences. Let’s hope that vaccination rates among the general public, when it comes time for that, don’t drop too far below the amazing 99.8% uptake rate that we’ve seen so far from the professionals.

As for the Tamaki part of this equation, a week ago Brian Tamaki told a small congregation in Queenstown that the reason for the earthquake we experienced recently was that the media had “gone after him”. Now, “Bishop” Brian is no stranger to claiming that a) earthquakes are deliberately caused by his god, b) these earthquakes are used by his god as a punishment and c) Brian is privy to the reason these punishments are meted out. However, past seismic events have apparently been caused by homosexuals, whereas this time it’s more personal to Brian, and we’ve supposedly all been punished for being mean to him.

I’m really struggling to get my head around the level of arrogance required for someone to believe that they are important enough that their god would threaten an entire nation with a long, scary earthquake in the middle of the night just for pointing out their failings.

Two years

Today is the second anniversary of the horrific Christchurch massacre, and as skeptics it’s sad to have seen over the last two years those in our country who have posted content denying that the attack was real, or claiming that it was a “false flag” operation. It’s been hard enough over the last 20 years watching high profile conspiracy theorists, such as Alex Jones, engage in denial in the US for events such as the Sandy Hook massacre and the 9/11 attacks. But to see this kind of wrong headed thinking at home somehow feels worse. I guess we’ve been able to rest on our laurels watching America suffer from a spread of the conspiracy mindset, and at least for me it seemed implausible that the problem would ever reach our fair shores. I guess I was just too naïve.

For one of the people who has been spreading misinformation about the Christchurch attack, Vinny Eastwood, he at least accepted that people died, and didn’t try to tell family members of the deceased that their loved ones either never existed or were hiding from them as part of a government plot. Soon after the attack Vinny travelled down to Christchurch to interview people, subsequently appearing on several alternative media outlets in the US speaking about how he distrusted the “official narrative” of what had happened. My memory of the immediate aftermath of the events is that there was some confusion at first as police worked day and night to figure out what had happened, but that a coherent picture was built up fairly quickly showing that the attack was the work of a single gunman.

However, Vinny appears to have used the early confusion in the media as a way to sow doubt and claim that the truth was being suppressed – something that he continues to do to this day. Here are a few of Vinny’s videos from the months after the attack, where he makes all kinds of baseless claims about the attack and who was behind it:

• https://youtu.be/UYVvEFO5VmM
• https://youtu.be/EQimJu5jck0
• https://youtu.be/yzUR9yYvCK8

And here is a video from last year, which Vinny re-posted to his Facebook page on Saturday, where in just 5 minutes he manages to Gish Gallop many of his nonsense ideas.

https://www.facebook.com/vincenteastwood/posts/10158087937342879

All of these videos are fairly enraging, and it might feel like there’s not much that can be done about them. However a recent video sees Vinny talking about how he’s recently had complaints made against his YouTube channel, and that he’s now received two out of three strikes from YouTube. A third strike would apparently involve removal of his channel, and the loss of his videos, and this would also take away a major source of his income. His secondary and tertiary YouTube accounts are also still active, for now – but who knows how long for.

Vinny says that he’s also had his Patreon account disabled, so he’s suggested that people subscribe to a “backup account” that he uses to raise money for his music endeavours. Thankfully that account is only receiving $19 per month, compared to $1,000 a month that Vinny says he was receiving through his main Patreon account until it was removed.

Vinny pleads with those who have been reporting his videos that spreading misinformation (or “truth content” as he calls it) is his livelihood, and that he has a small baby he needs to take care of. To me, this really shouldn’t factor into the equation. No matter what Vinny’s personal circumstances are, the spreading of dangerous misinformation is just not cricket. It doesn’t make it okay for Vinny to dupe people simply because he depends on the spreading of misinformation to pay his bills every month.

As an aside, Vinny says that the attacks on his media channels are making him feel unwell. So it’s lucky that his recent videos have been sponsored by David Holden, a well known alternative medicine practitioner who is responsible for offering bogus cancer treatments to desperate sufferers. It seems like Vinny and David will make good bedfellows.

Finally, like many of the people who posted messages to Vinny’s live stream, I’m sending prayers his way. I think that’s as much as he deserves, and I can only hope that this funding crisis forces Vinny to seriously reconsider his life choices. Maybe he could look for an honest, stable job that will allow him to care for his family while not damaging the stability of our country and leading people to believe in an erroneous, damaging worldview.

4 Simultaneous Days Rotate In Same 24 Hours Of Earth

We’ve just come out of another short spell spent at level 3 lockdown for Auckland, and level 2 for the rest of us. Well done to all of you who managed to follow the rules and help keep us all safe, and a boo to everyone who thought that protesting in large groups and not wearing a mask is an acceptable response.

My first news story involves a political figure, Jami-Lee Ross. We’ve received a complaint that I, and possibly others who write this newsletter, sometimes venture into political territory, and that our political views are not shared by everyone in our organisation. I will admit that I lean to the left (as do many people I know who are active members of the NZ Skeptics) but, despite this, as much as possible I try to keep my political views out of my writing. If I’m criticising or commending politicians, my aim is to be mentioning them because the things they’re saying or doing are of skeptical interest (and sadly, more often than not it’s because what they’re doing flies in the face of good skeptical thinking). If I ever fall short of this, and fail to give a skeptical angle when I mention politics (or religion or any other topic, for that matter), feel free to pull me up on it.

We have also been asked about a right of reply, especially as to an extent this newsletter has replaced our journal, and the journal used to have a Letters section. Coincidentally, a couple of weeks ago I added a note to the bottom of our newsletter which lets you all know that if you have something of interest that you want to see published in this newsletter, you can send it to us and we’ll look over it and add it to the next week’s newsletter (unless you’re uncritically reviewing the TimeCube website, that is). The more skeptical voices we can promote, the stronger we’ll be as an organisation – and the more you all do my job for me, the happier I am 😉

Mark Honeychurch
Secretary, NZ Skeptics

Skeptics 0, Ken Ring 1

After last week’s nocturnal earthquake, Ken Ring has been on Facebook proving how right he is. He’s pointed out that he predicted the earthquake in his 2021 almanac:

From the “Earthquake diary”, on p339 of the 2021 NZ Weather Almanac, it is written that the days of earthquake activity for March would be the 4th, 9th, 18th-20th, 25th, and 29th. This morning’s shake struck at 2 hours after midnight, close enough to 4th to be counted as a prediction.

I guess it’s time for the NZ Skeptics to throw in the towel and admit defeat, in the face of this uncannily accurate prediction. Except, I can’t help shaking the feeling that maybe, just maybe, by Ken’s own admission, his predictions cast the net wide enough that it’s hard for him to miss…

So, pulling this one apart, let’s have a look at the dates in Ken’s March predictions. If we allow Ken his one day leeway, that would mean that he predicted an earthquake for the 3rd-5th, 8th-10th, 17th-21st, 24th-26th and 28th-30th of March – a grand total of 17 out of 31 days in the month. For any earthquake that happens in March, he appears to have a slightly above even chance of the quake landing on one of his predicted dates, even if his predictions are totally random guesses lacking any kind of scientific rigour.

However, a one day leeway isn’t all Ken has asked for. Last year, talking about his earthquake predictions on Facebook, Ken stated that people need to “Allow 1-2 days error as in all forecasting”. Gosh, if we were to allow him the “2 days error” he asks for, his March predictions would have covered 26 out of 31 days. It seems that, if he’s willing to be this loose in his predictions, it’s going to be hard for him to fail. But maybe that’s the point.

We’re now going to be a little bit cheeky, and borrow the ideas of sensitivity and specificity from the field of medicine. What we need to know in order for us to do this are very rough ideas of Ken’s true and false positive and negative rates. The “true positive” rate for Ken’s predictions is okay (maybe half or more of the major earthquakes we experience fall on one of Ken’s predicted earthquake dates). However his “false positive” rate (the times Ken predicts an earthquake and it doesn’t happen) is much higher – most of the dates Ken throws out there don’t turn out to be days where a sizable earthquake hits New Zealand. His “true negative” rate appears to be fairly good (many of the dates he doesn’t predict an earthquake for, earthquakes don’t happen), but his “false negative” rate (dates for which a major seismic event occurs but he hasn’t predicted it) is not great. The upshot of this is that both the sensitivity and the specificity of Ken’s earthquake predicting ability are pretty abysmal.

The astute among you (and I’m assuming that’s many of you, given that you’re skeptics and prone to questioning what other people say) will have spotted that this method doesn’t translate overly well to Ken’s earthquake predictions – not least because of several major issues with the kinds of predictions Ken makes.

To explore this, let’s play a game of make-believe. Imagine a world where Ken Ring has figured out a way to predict the timing of earthquakes, a method that the world’s leading seismologists have somehow totally missed. Even if that were the case, and Ken’s ability was real, it turns out it would still be almost useless. In our make-believe world, where Ken’s specificity and sensitivity are both 100%, let’s look at his March 2021 predictions. If earthquakes occurred somewhere in New Zealand on the “4th, 9th, 18th-20th, 25th, and 29th” of March and not on any other days, exactly as Ken predicted, what practical steps could Civil Defence, or any branch of government or business, take that would help people? Ken usually offers no useful information beyond listing dates, and occasionally a rough location. He has claimed weak and strong earthquakes, and quakes thousands of kilometres away, as “hits” for his predictions. Without knowing specifics about location, depth, strength, time of day, etc, these dates are not terribly useful. I’m struggling to think of how this level of predictive power would change how we live our lives, or make any difference to our earthquake preparedness. In short, Ken offers too little information in his predictions for them to be of any practical use.

As we said before we know that, in the real world, Ken’s predicted earthquake dates – no matter how vague he makes them – still aren’t very accurate. His specificity and sensitivity are not 100% – in fact, they’re nowhere near. We have to conclude, given his lack of accuracy, lack of detail, and lack of plausibility (using phases of the moon to predict earthquakes seems iffy), that it’s vanishingly unlikely that Ken Ring really has the ability to predict earthquakes at all. It’s much more likely that Ken has found his schtick; a trick that allows him to extract money from the unwary, with which he lines his pockets.

tldr; Ken Ring’s earthquake predictions are not accurate, and even if they were they wouldn’t be very useful.

Now that we’re fairly confident that Ken’s more shyster than visionary, I think that we can safely ignore his recent advice that tsunamis are not a risk for New Zealand. He’s been asserting that most of New Zealand is underwater, i.e. shallow waters surrounding our islands, and that these shallows mean that a tsunami will never affect New Zealand. If the experts say that we are in danger of a tsunami after a large offshore earthquake, as they did last week, and Ken tells us we’re not in any danger, I’m going to follow the advice of the experts with science and computer modelling behind them. Plus, Wikipedia has a thing or two to say about tsunamis affecting New Zealand. Sorry Ken, it’s nothing personal.

Hi there

A big portion of this week’s newsletter content was contributed by NZ Skeptics Committee member – Jonathan Harper.

Craig Shearer

Reiki

Mark Honeychurch recently covered a Newshub story by Sarah Templeton in our newsletter (Reiki is Here To Save Us All) about a visit to a Reiki person by the reporter. (Practitioner, in my humble opinion, is probably the wrong word). 

Committee member Russell and I contacted Newshub expressing our obvious concerns about it being a free promotion that omitted to tell readers what Reiki is, and the lack of evidence for efficacy. As a result, they decided to add a mention that the writer had not paid for the session she reported on. 

I received a reply from Dianne Martin who is the Broadcasting Standards manager at Discovery NZ (US owned) which recently bought Mediaworks, the owner of Newshub. She said:

“The article was based on one person’s experience of a Reiki treatment and it was not intended to be a discussion of the two sides of the debate about its efficacy. Once the disclaimer was added to the Article, the Committee maintains readers could judge the merits of Reiki treatments and the Article for themselves, taking into consideration that the treatment was gifted for the purpose of review.”

This could be a breach of the principle of accuracy, but we may be best to consider the change they did make as a win, and leave it at that.

I was disappointed to learn from Ms Martin that:

“The Media Council has previously determined that ‘the debate over alternative remedies is sufficiently well known not to require balancing comment in every story about them. The subject falls within the exception to the principle of balance for issues of enduring public discussion.’  The Committee is satisfied that balance was not required in this Article.”

Unfortunately that seems to be the reality of the situation. The media are likely to continue to publish such pieces, which seem to fall into the category of “advertorial content”. But it’s great to point out when it’s not apparent from the article that journalistic integrity might be at stake!

Joke of the week

I can’t say we’ll be having this every week, but I found this amusing little joke on social media this week:

Q: How many conspiracy theorists does it take to change a lightbulb?

A: Do your own research!
 

Thanks to those who’ve recently joined us!

If you’re a regular reader of our newsletter, you’ll know that we’re publicising annual membership of NZ Skeptics, which is extremely attractively priced being only $40, or $20 if you’re unwaged.

We’ve recently had quite a few new members join us – a warm welcome to you if you’re one of them – if you’ve not yet joined us, you can still do so by going to our membership page.

As a special bonus, if you join before the end of March we’ll send you a bona fide “Card Carrying Skeptic” business card with your name and membership number – it’s great to show to friends when they comment about how you’re always so damn skeptical. (All existing members who are paid up by the end of March will also be mailed the card.) 

It’s not yet been scientifically proven, but we feel that just carrying the card on your person will have a protective effect against all sorts of woo that you may be exposed to. 🙂

Your Skeptics Society Needs You

For those of you who like the work we do enough that you want to support us financially, it’s that time of the year when membership subscriptions are due. Membership is only $40, or $20 if you’re unwaged, and the money we receive will be spent on worthy causes, allowing us to help make New Zealand a more skeptical place.

Also, if you join before the end of March we’ll send you a bona fide “Card Carrying Skeptic” business card with your name and membership number – it’s great to show to friends when they comment about how you’re always so damn skeptical.

Subscriptions can be paid (via credit/debit card) using the Memberful member management system at:

https://nzskeptics.memberful.com/

If you are a current member who hasn’t logged into our Memberful site before, click the Reset it link (next to “Forgot your password?”) and enter your email address. An email will be sent to you containing a password reset link for the account we’ve set up for you.

If you want to pay via internet banking, have any problems using Memberful, or have any other questions about membership, please contact our treasurer, Paul Ashton, at [email protected].

Anyway, now that I’ve annoyed you all by asking for your support, I suppose I’d better get on with telling you what’s been going on of skeptical interest recently.

Mark Honeychurch
Secretary, NZ Skeptics

Grant Robertson has Had Enough

MP Grant Robertson was on Peter Williams’ Magic Talk radio show this week when he was asked about the “Great Reset”. His immediate reaction was to quit the interview early, and he’s subsequently let Magic Talk know that he won’t be returning for his regular weekly slot with Williams. So, what’s going on in this drama that’s of interest to skeptics?

The Great Reset, for those who’ve not heard about this conspiracy theory, was originally an idea posited by the World Economic Forum during the start of the current COVID pandemic. It suggests that a world-changing event like a pandemic would be a good place to start to tinker with how economies operate, in order to correct an imbalance many people feel has crept up over the last 100 years or so where the ultra-rich are being taxed less and are getting richer faster, and that the gap between the rich and poor is widening. It also talks about using technology more effectively, and being more mindful of long term environmental issues. Unfortunately the conspiracy minded have decided that, like the UN’s Agenda 21 and 2030 before it, the Great Reset is secretly a global plan to take away our freedoms and impose a socialist prison state system that will enslave us all. Of course, these plans have never been proclaimed outright – you have to read between the lines of the Great Reset’s documents to see the nefarious nature of these insidious ideas.

As a backdrop to this event, Peter Williams has already been in the news recently for promoting anti-vaccine views. He recommended that viewers visit the Voices for Freedom website to find out more about the COVID vaccine. Unfortunately Voices for Freedom is a new group in New Zealand who have been hosting what they call “courageous conversations” around COVID, conversations which skeptics would be more likely to call “total and utter nonsense”. These include claiming that masks are ineffective, casting doubt on PCR tests and vaccines, and promoting Ivermectin, vitamins and zinc as effective treatments/prophylactics for COVID.

So, anyway, when Peter asked Grant about the Great Reset, I’m guessing that Grant was well aware of Peter’s recent controversy and was primed for a silly question coming his way.

I’ve met with Grant before, to ask for advice about helping asylum seekers. He was rational and knowledgeable, and came across as level-headed and skeptical. It’s great to see him take a stand so publicly in this instance, and we can only hope that others will follow his lead.

Rush Limbaugh has Died

The controversial conservative US radio host Rush Limbaugh died this week. Although this isn’t something that the NZ Skeptics feel is okay to celebrate, we do acknowledge that Limbaugh was responsible for the spreading of many damaging and harmful conspiracy theories, and was very mean spirited to people he saw as the enemies of the US, including those who were black, gay, liberal, female and/or atheist. Unsurprisingly, the work Rush Limbaugh undertook spreading his divisive message was recently rewarded with America’s Medal of Freedom. Rather than going into more details of Limbaugh’s life, I will leave it to the (hopefully impartial) BBC’s obituary if you would like to know more.

Billy Te Kahika has Quit

Or, at the very least he’s apparently quit politics. This one was a bit of a surprise to me, as the conspiracy minded Billy had only just announced that he was re-naming his Public Party to the Freedom Party. Maybe he quit because he realised that there had already been a Freedom Party in NZ, and that all of the most obvious domain names had already been taken? Alternatively, it might be that recent accusations of financial mis-management and fraud are making life in the limelight a little too uncomfortable for Billy at the moment.

Of course, the void left by this conspiracy driven political movement will likely quickly be filled by the Outdoors Party and others. It wouldn’t surprise me if Mothers Who Stand for Freedom (Renee Argyros and Laura Surrich), Voices for Freedom (Claire Deeks), the Brave Truth Society (Damien De Ment), the Maori Ranger Security Division (Monica Eastick and Peter Martic) or some other conspiracy minded group tried to start a political party, in an effort to capture those voters who want to give their vote to an “alternative” party.

A local Psychic has Guessed Wrong

Lockdown timing predictions from a Hamilton based psychic, Sarah King, have been unearthed and posted to our Facebook group this week:

Sarah said when she made these totally wrong predictions, back in June last year, that she has been finely tuning her “spiritual ninja skills”. It’s refreshing to see a psychic who’s still willing to make concrete predictions, rather than just uttering vague platitudes designed to make people feel good. Of course, most psychics avoid being this specific because they’re invariably shown to be totally inaccurate. I’m guessing that Sarah will learn this valuable lesson in time!

Another post in the Skeptics FB group this week showed Tuppence, a Hawkes Bay medium, telling her followers that she was saddened by the sudden cancellation of the Art Deco festival in Napier, where she had planned to offer her psychic services. Of course the main question being asked by skeptics is why she didn’t see it coming.

This reminds me of the time psychic Jeanette Wilson was due to entertain the audience at a Wellness event that was attended by a group of skeptics back in 2013, but she had to cancel her appearance at the last minute due to “unforseen personal circumstances”.

Conspiracy Spam

A member emailed us this week to share an unaddressed letter she received in her mailbox. Thankfully the anonymous author of the document has put in the hard work of joining all the unconnected dots of some of the conspiracies I’ve mentioned above, and more, and has figured out that the overall aim of the New Zealand government is transhumanism – apparently we’re going to be converted to Human 2.0 via the COVID vaccine. As a technology enthusiast I’m having a hard time seeing the downside to being upgraded, although I have to admit to being worried that, given Bill Gates’ involvement, my new nanobots may be running a Windows based OS. Hopefully I’ll be able to flash them to a more stable BSD or Linux OS, just as soon as I figure out where my serial port is.

Anyway, in case you too would like to be a part of this Human 2.0 experiment, here’s a copy of the letter which is kind enough to list the required reading before your upgrade can take place:

Hi there

Conspiracies are in the news a lot lately. In recent newsletters we’ve talked about them a lot, and there’s more to cover this week, both from an international and NZ-based perspective.

Craig Shearer

Newsletter Feedback

One of the joys or risks (depending on your perspective) of writing these newsletters is that we sometimes receive negative feedback. A few weeks ago I wrote about QAnon and the realisations that believers were having that the predictions of Q hadn’t panned out. From this I received the following feedback. My comments in [red].

“If these are your viewpoints, then I wonder if you consider information available from sources other than mainstream media, which you clearly echo in your “newsletter”  (I say “yours” for a reason). [While it’s good to consider other sources, at least the mainstream media is written by professional journalists, who, while not perfect and have biases, at least are trained. What other sources would you suggest that are accessible from here in NZ?]

 I am an American, but in NZ for 45 years. Herewith, my responses to TWO examples from your diatribe:

 I can vouch for the existence of high-level pedophile rings and their protection under certain domains [Then I really hope you’ve done something about this, such as reporting to relevant authorities!]. This reality is tossed as nonsense and minimised by your mockingbird article about “Q beliefs” and what not.

 This is the very reason why this horrible crime continues unabated (100,000 missing children in USA – never recovered [Not sure of the source of your 100,000 number (and over what period of time?), but this article provides some interesting background, showing that the number of children missing and never seen again is quite small.]) and this certainly does occur through these rings here in [Location supplied] (I’m an ex-secondary teacher).  All protected.

 Aren’t you skeptical? [Yes, that’s my role]

 Was there election fraud? Is Biden for real the most popular President “eva”? [I believe that this is a reasonable conclusion given the polarisation of the electorate. Many people were highly motivated on both sides meaning a high turnout.]

I saw the votes being changed onscreen during the election night (did you?) [I saw reports of videos but I think there are more prosaic explanations, such as errors being corrected, than election fraud.]

I have seen CCTV of ballots dragged out and counted (multiple times) after everyone ordered home (have you?). [No, I’ve not seen evidence that votes were counted and added to a total multiple times. How credible is your evidence, and would this account for enough error to sway the result?]

I have seen videos of dumped ballots – for President Trump, of course (have you?) [No, and again, how significant would this be even if this was the case?]

How many dead people? And after you die, you re-register as a Democrat?  Thousands, wtf? [Evidence? While there may be isolated cases of this happening, is it widespread enough to affect the outcome?]

I have watched the testimony of many and seen their affidavits under penalty of perjury (>20,000 recorded) from nearly every one of about 5,000 reporting counties in the USA (have you?) [If there was credible evidence of fraud, why wasn’t it presented in the numerous court cases brought?]

 Aren’t you skeptical? [Yes, but not credulous]

 I could go on, but I’m afraid you are not as skeptical as I. Good luck in your quest to find real answers.”

To me this illustrates the difference between skepticism and unbridled gullibility in buying into conspiracy theories. To me skepticism must be exercised with caution. With specific regard to the US election, if there was clear evidence of large scale fraud it would have been produced in the numerous court cases that the Trump team lost. For the fraud to rise to a level that could determine the outcome would require a vast conspiracy which would likely be exposed very quickly.

We should listen to actual experts, who have commented that the recent US election was the most secure ever.

Membership of NZ Skeptics

NZ Skeptics membership runs on a calendar year basis and we’re about to switch to a new system for collecting subs. If you’re enjoying these newsletters and you’re not a member, we encourage you to join us – it’s a very reasonable $40/year for individuals and only $20/year if you’re unwaged.

We are using a new system called Memberful to manage memberships. Memberful offers a number of advantages:

• Members can opt to save their credit card details, so that annual subs are paid automatically each year.
• The credit card payment interface is simpler than the PayPal one.
• For those who do not wish to have subs paid automatically, reminder emails will be sent a few days before membership expires
• Members can update their own personal information
• In the future we might decide to offer member-only content on skeptics.nz, accessed using Memberful login details.

Details of all current members (those whose most recent subscription year was 2020 or later) have been loaded into Memberful. If you’re a member of NZ Skeptics, in the next day or two you should receive an email that contains a link to reset your Memberful password, sent to the email address we have recorded for you. When you get that email:

1. Click the reset password link and give yourself a password. That will log you in.
2. Once logged in, click subscriptions to view your subscriptions.
3. Your current subscription type should reflect the most recent sub payment made. If you need to change to a different plan, click the Change button.
4. If your subscription is expired, click Renew and enter credit card details.
5. If you need to change your email address, name or postal address, that can be done in the Profile page.

Credit card payment processing is done by Stripe, a very large payment processing company that has been used for payments for Skeptics conference for the last few years. Credit card details are handled entirely by Stripe, and cannot be accessed by NZ Skeptics or Memberful. If you choose to save your card details to enable automatic renewals then those saved details are held by Stripe.

If you do not want to login to Memberful to renew your membership then contact the treasurer (Paul Ashton) at [email protected] for details of other payment options (such as payment via internet banking).

Also contact the treasurer if there are any questions or issues about renewing subscriptions via Memberful.

An Atheist in Iran

I like to sum up my style as a combination of brevity and rambling. This time the newsletter will be of the former persuasion.

Jess Macfarlane

Article of atheism

Late last year we were contacted by Sina Nasiri, who had written a heart-felt article about his journey to atheism while growing up in Iran. His article explored the risky business of finding people to trust and confide in, in a society where being an atheist is no trivial thing – where apostacy from Islam is punishable by death.

While the atheist and skeptic communities overlap in New Zealand, and many in the society appreciated and were moved by the article, it was the feeling of the NZ Skeptics Society that our focus should remain on promoting critical thinking and calling out the harms of pseudoscience.

We felt the society also did not have the connections and experience to support people who might connect with Sina’s story and reach out to us for help. So, with permission we have forwarded Sina’s article to the New Zealand Association of Rationalists and Humanists, and would recommend anyone interested in this subject check out their website.

If you are interested in reading some of Sina’s previous articles, you can find out more at Atheist Refugee Relief.

Goodbye Ngaire McCarthy

Last week I attended, online, the funeral of Ngaire McCarthy, who died just over a week ago from cancer. Ngaire was an outspoken Māori atheist, humanist and rationalist who spoke to the NZ Skeptics at our 2014 conference in Auckland. She told us about how the census shows comparable rates of dis-belief amongst Māori and Pākehā in New Zealand, and how Christianity had imposed itself on Māori culture, merging in a way that makes it hard to pick them apart today.

Ngaire was, for a few years, the President of the New Zealand Association of Rationalists and Humanists, and later became the organisation’s librarian, where she diligently catalogued the NZARH’s large collection of books on religion, atheism, humanism, free thought and skepticism. The library includes a collection of books once owned by the NZ Skeptics, which were donated to the NZARH for safekeeping many years ago.

Ngaire pushed for secularism in New Zealand, arguing for Religious Instruction and other faith-based observances to be removed from primary schools. She believed that religion in schools is detrimental to children, often causing long term damage to class cohesion and scientific literacy.

For all of you who met and spent any time with Ngaire, I’m sure you’ll remember her sharp wit, infectious laugh and most of all her warmth. She was one of those people who could make you feel like an old friend the first time you met them.

Ngaire’s sister Hema, who is the current President of the NZARH, officiated at the funeral. Several of Ngaire’s children and wider family members spoke of her love for science and rationalism, and how she used to tell them as kids that they were made of stardust, and that answers were to be found in science, not religion. It was sad to be saying goodbye to her, but heartwarming to hear the effect she’d had on those around her, and the respect she’d earned from her peers for her tireless efforts to combat religious privilege in New Zealand.

Mark Honeychurch

If you want to know more about Ngaire’s life and her beliefs, the articles and videos below are a good place to start:

https://www.canadianatheist.com/2019/04/mccarthy-jacobsen/
https://religiouseducation.co.nz/whats-the-problem-with-karakia/

Reiki is here to save us all

Or at least that’s what NewsHub would have us believe, with an article published on Tuesday about the benefits of Reiki, an energy healing technique that involves the practitioner manipulating your “energy field” by waving their hands around your body.

Of course there’s no evidence that this energy field exists, or that manipulating it has therapeutic benefits. What little scientific literature is out there is a bit of a mess, and there appears to be an issue with the quality of the studies that do exist – an issue that exists for many alternative therapies. Most people who have the time and money to test these therapies are practitioners, and obviously they have a vested interest in proving the efficacy of their chosen therapy.

My opinion is that a Bayesian analysis would show that any positive results from studies would not be enough to overcome the sheer implausibility of what is being posited. The idea that physicists somehow have whole chunks missing from their understanding of the nature of reality, while a handful of plucky young spiritual folk have not only made groundbreaking discoveries about new energy fields, but have also learned how to manipulate them with their hands, needles, diluted poisons and simple electronic devices with flashing lights, seems laughable. It’s much more congruent that these people are a mixture of con-artists and the conned, people who don’t know how hard it is to take a glimpse at the true nature of the world we live in, how many hours the best minds in the world spend trying to peel back the curtain of reality. So, in their ignorance (and arrogance), they come to believe that they know better than the combined effort of thousands of scientists.

If you’re interested in learning more about this idea of using Bayesian analysis in medicine, there’s a good summary here of a couple of posts on the Science Based Medicine blog about the difference between Evidence Based Medicine (EBM) and Science Based Medicine (SBM). Click through to the original SBM articles to read more. Suffice it to say that SBM has more going for it, but unfortunately EBM is far too popular in modern medical science, leading to the legitimising, and even funding, of many therapies that we skeptics are pretty sure are meritless.

One common thing you’ll hear from alternative medicine practitioners is that you can’t knock something until you’ve tried it. Now obviously this is silly – as skeptics we know that personal experience isn’t to be trusted. That our personal anecdotes are okay if they’re all we’ve got, but that they should always take a back seat to proper scientific testing if it’s available.

However, it’ll come as no surprise to some of you that I’ve had Reiki treatment in the past. This happened at a Spiritual and Psychic fair in Upper Hutt, where around ten of us skeptics turned up to sample the therapies on offer, and then make complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority about unsubstantiated claims the companies offering these therapies were making in their posters and pamphlets.

Anyway, the Reiki did nothing positive for me, beyond being nice and relaxing. Obviously this anecdote is neither here nor there – my personal experience of Reiki has no bearing on whether it actually works or not. But sometimes I do find it useful to have tried a therapy – so that I can make points when arguing with practitioners both that personal anecdote is no way to test if a therapy works, and that even if it was a good way to test a therapy, I’ve tried it and it did nothing for me.

Back to the article – sadly it reads a lot like a paid advertisement for Olivia Scott’s Reiki practice in Auckland. Many claims are made, about Reiki’s efficacy and mechanism of action, as well as about its increase in popularity, but absolutely no evidence is given for any of this, and no time is given to the opposing, prevailing view of science that Reiki is bunkum. The article even finishes with a cringeworthy push for people to give up their hard-earned cash and try this ludicrous treatment:

“Whether you’re looking for healing, more energy or just a sublime cozy nap – maybe skip the next F45 session and head to Scott’s clinic for a session instead. Your cortisol levels will thank you.“